Various organizations in the fields of business and administration face an enormous task of maintaining and controlling large inventories of items that are required by their employees to perform their respective duties. To facilitate check-in/check-out, inventory management, and theft control of such items, it is known to use bar codes and/or sensitized magnetic strips. The bar codes allow the items to be quickly identified using a scanner. The magnetic strip is used in conjunction with a magnetic detection device for theft control. The magnetic strip is normally sensitized. When an item is checked-out, the magnetic strip is de-sensitized. When the item is returned, the magnetic strip is re-sensitized. The magnetic detection device triggers an alarm if an attempt is made to pass through a controlled access carrying an article with a sensitized magnetic strip.
As an alternative to bar codes and sensitized magnetic strips, usage of RFID tags is known from the prior art. U.S. Pat. No. 6,693,539 shows an inventory system using articles with RFID tags. Each RFID tag has a unique identification or serial number for identifying the individual article. An inventory database tracks all of the tag articles and maintains circulation status information for each article. Articles are checked out using a self-checkout system.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,169,483 shows a self-checkout/self-check-in RFID and electronics article surveillance system. RFID tags on the articles are read for updating an inventory database.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,583,083 shows a checkout station to reduce retail theft. For theft prevention the retail items have theft prevention indicators for detection of the presence of any such items in the possession of a shopper.
Use of such electronic prior art systems for the purpose of inventorying items in the possession of employees and for the purpose of employee theft prevention is limited as such electronic systems are not designed for use in a business environment. As a consequence, many business organizations lack an efficient and precise inventorying procedure regarding items in the possession of employees.
Usually inventorying of such items is only performed as a part of an employee separation checkout procedure. The employee separation checkout procedure often involves filling out a paper form listing the items returned by the employee. This has the further disadvantage that it places the burden of keeping track of the items provided from the employer to its employee on the employee himself or herself. The same problem occurs when a business organisation moves to another location as this requires that inventorying is performed.